ELEMENTS Promises

• Efficient mechanisms to advance collaboration, leverage diversity, and promote innovation.

• An inspiring medium to encourage volunteerism and volunteer leadership in communities.

• Immediate access and incorporation of local solutions to local problems.

• Means to ensure impartiality.

• A continuous supply of ethnographic information.

• Safe ways to engage violent groups.

• Instant and reliable monitoring and evaluation of citizens action projects.

Asset Based Community Development

• Society is a system of chaotic order in diverse components.

• Long-term change can not be advanced based on the goals of a development organization. 

• As one of the actors, development organizations need to work with the energy and motion in the system.

• Effective Community Engagement works from the “top-down,” the “middle-out,” and the “bottom-up.”

• Lasting Community Development follows the sequence of listening to the system; identifying sections where positive change is happening; and planning and implementing initiatives to maximize the already ongoing positive change.

• The overall impact is greater than the sum of their individual projects when multiple organizations network together.

How ELEMENTS Works

COMMUNITY DOCUMENTARIES

COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS

ONLINE COMMUNITY PORTAL 

ELEMENTS 

The Next Generation

Community Engagement Platform

Serve to:

• Establish relationship with a community

• Capture and present community issues through powerful visuals 

• Inspire community members for social change

Based on:

• Semi-structured interviews of community members 

• Field observations 

• Findings of previous research

Three types of workshops are planned and conducted with community members at different stages:

• Exploratory

• Skill-building

• Designing, funding, and implementing jointly planned Social Action Projects 

 

Online Portal is a platform to listen to the system, inspire and engage community members, and coordinate all development activities through the following hubs:

 

Ethnography 

Trained community members supply rich media ethnographic information: descriptions, photos, and videos of the issues within their communities.

Reflections

Online discussion groups for community members to discuss and reflect issues.

 

Positive Change

• Stories of recognized and emerging community leaders and their initiatives.

 

Feedback 

• Brainstormers

• Surveys

• Quick polls  

 

Learn

Skill building webinars

 

Network of Action

Networking and coordination between the on-going projects of different organizations to maximize their collective impact  

 

Social Action Projects 

Jointly planned and implemented community projects  

 

System Reports

Reports based on surveys, quick polls, and brainstormers